Nancy Norsic, left, hugs her son after being reunited following a shooting on Monday at Chardon High School.

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Suspect T.J. Lane, 17, admitted using a .22-caliber pistol Monday morning at Chardon High School, Geauga County prosecutor David Joyce said at a juvenile court hearing. Joyce said Lane told police he didn't know his victims.

"He chose his victims at random," Joyce said. "This is not about bullying. This is not about drugs."

Judge Timothy Grendell ordered Lane, who is a juvenile, held for at least the next 15 days. Prosecutors have until March 1 to charge him.

Lane's face twitched lightly while the prosecutor recounted the attack, and he sniffled and half-closed his eyes as he walked out of the room with deputies. Lane's custodial grandfather and two aunts joined him in court; the women reached over and lightly embraced the grandfather as the hearing began.

The judge imposed a gag order on opposing attorneys at the prosecutor's request and told the media not to photograph Lane or any family members.

The hearing came hours after the death toll rose to three and one day after Lane allegedly opened fire in the high school cafeteria, sending panicked students ducking under tables and running through the halls.

By Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images

A Facebook photo shows T.J. Lane, the suspect in a deadly shooting at Chardon High School.

Demetrius Hewlin, 16, who had been in critical condition, died Tuesday morning. Russell King Jr., 17, died earlier in the morning.

"We are very saddened by the loss of our son and others in our Chardon community," Hewlin's family said in a statement. "Demetrius was a happy young man who loved life and his family and friends. We will miss him very much, but we are proud that he will be able to help others through organ donation. We ask that you respect our privacy during this difficult time."

Hewlin and King were among five students injured when a suspect identified by a family lawyer as Thomas "T.J." Lane began shooting at Chardon High School on Monday morning. Student Daniel Parmertor died hours after the shooting.

Police Chief Tim McKenna said after Tuesday's court hearing that the department received four 911 calls and the sheriff's office received additional calls after the shooting. Police got word after arriving at the school that Lane had left the grounds.

"We had a teacher in the school that attempted to stop him (Lane), and he was probably our best observor, our best witness to let us know that that student had left that buidling," McKenna said. "That gave us our greenlight to get our officers in the door."

Lane's family is mourning "this terrible loss for their community," family attorney Robert Farinacci said in a statement.

School Superintendent Joe Bergant said school will reopen for classes Friday. Until then, school facilities will be open for counseling Wednesday and for parents and students to return together Thursday.

"I want to assure parents our facilities, and most important our students, that you will be safe when you're re-entering our program," Bergant said. "We're not just any old place. Chardon, this is everyplace. As you've seen in the past, this can happen anywhere."

Geauga County Sheriff Dan McClelland said the shooting has "touched a lot of people, a lot of families" who, like him, are natives of the area. McClelland is a graduate of the high school. He met his wife there.

"We have a community, asking, 'Are you OK?' " he said. "We need to get that message out: Chardon, Geauga County, northeast Ohio is rallying like nothing we've ever seen before. The outpouring of concern, hope, encouragement has been unbelievable."

Residents have started raising money to help the shooting victims.

The Chardon High School class of 2007 will make bracelets and pins to be sold at two stores. The Chardon Angels of Hope has set up a fund at a bank for donations.

"We now deal with a community looking to heal," McClelland said.

Monday, panicked students screamed and ran through the halls after gunfire broke out at the start of the school day at 1,100-student Chardon High, about 30 miles from Cleveland. Teachers locked down their classrooms as they had been trained to do during drills, and students took cover as they waited for the all-clear.

As they huddled in locked-down classrooms, students quickly learned the incident was not a drill and kept in touch with parents texting, tweeting and calling them on their cellphones.

Heather Ziska, 17, said she was in the cafeteria when she heard popping noises in the hall. She said she saw a boy she recognized as a fellow student enter the cafeteria and start shooting.

"Everybody just started running," said Megan Hennessy, 17, who was in class when she heard loud noises.

Hiding in classrooms, frightened students spent more than an hour trying to communicate with the outside and get reliable information, said senior Matt Goergen, 17, who was in first-period English class when the school went into lockdown. Many in the room didn't believe there was a shooting until "a girl sitting next to me got a call from her dad saying it was real," he said in a text-message interview.

Sophomore Trevor Miducki, 16, was in the hallway next to the cafeteria when he saw two girls "running down the hallway, just, like, sprinting" from the cafeteria.

Locked in his first-period English class, Miducki heard sirens. "We were all wondering what happened," he said. "We were all frantically texting our parents. … We were keeping calm but were all so scared."

Miducki said the atmosphere during lockdown was calm at first, but as the morning wore on, "it started to get more frantic and panicky."

After police confirmed that a shooting had taken place, "it was pretty panicked. Girls shaking. Guys shaking. People calling their moms. It got pretty intense pretty fast."

Senior Seanna Sicher, 18, was in physics class.

"My class assumed that it was just a drill and drifted toward the back wall. Lights were turned out, the door was locked, the window covered," she said. "It was maybe five minutes later when our teacher received an e-mail and people started checking their phones. We realized immediately that it was serious, and the whole room fell silent."

Sicher described the scene as similar to "a 9/11 movie" as students tried to reach loved ones.

"It was almost impossible to send a message, too, because so many of us were trying," Sicher said by e-mail. "We were confused because everyone was hearing a different story: The shooter was caught, there were two shooters, six people shot, one person shot, shooter still on the loose — nobody knew what to believe. We had calls and texts from friends and family across the state and even country asking if we were OK."

Miducki and other students said social networking was helpful — except when it wasn't. Rumors flew on Twitter.

"We heard so many different stories — it was crazy what we heard," he said.

The school used a phone-alert system to tell parents about the shooting, and hundreds of parents rushed to the school, where police, FBI, SWAT teams and ambulances were on the scene.

FBI Agent Scott Wilson would not comment on a possible motive. Freshman Danny Komertz, 15, said the suspect was an outcast.

The attack occurred amid a steady drop in school violence. After peaking in the 2003-04 school year with 49 fatalities, the number of students killed on campus has steadily declined.

Miducki, speaking by phone around 2 p.m. Monday, said he was still having trouble wrapping his mind around the shooting.

"It's so hard to grasp," he said. "This is literally something you would see in a movie or a video game."

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